Bought & Paid For

"We are hardly [Zimbabwe or Venezuela]. But if we keep using TARP to create a sort of 'Most Favored Borrower' status, we'll erode the safeguards that keep election to office in America from being the kind of giant spoils system that's common in much of the world. . . . [In the Chrysler bankruptcy, the Obama administration] got its pet majority stakeholders to screw both their own shareholders, and the other creditors, in order to give a powerful union a sweetheart deal . . . When the government gives money to favored constituencies -- well, I don't like it, but as PJ O'Rourke says, that's basically what our government does. 'It ought to be right there in the constitution: We the People, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and give money to jerks. . . . ' But when it starts stepping in and trying to bypass the bankruptcy rules in order to make someone else give money to jerks, that's different in magnitude, and in kind."

-- Megan McArdle, writing at TheAtlantic.com on the Obama Administration's manipulation of the Chrysler bankruptcy to benefit the UAW